


shine your light, be our beacon (for I am blind and will not see)

by NightsMistress



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Found Families, Gen, Post-Blue Lily Lily Blue, experiments with magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-26 23:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5023927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fall in Henrietta was characterized by clear weeks of cool air and crumbling leaves accented by rain that stuck around for a whole day, like a guest who wasn’t quite sure if he were wanted or not. Blue had too many unexpected guests that she was uncertain if she wanted them to stay or not, and one friend that she desperately wanted to stay.</p><p>Or: Blue and her mother's lovers, Blue and her ghostly raven boy, and the unfairness of change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shine your light, be our beacon (for I am blind and will not see)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galfridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galfridian/gifts).



> My thanks to Isis, who received this half-finished work and made it into what it is.

Blue was suffering from a surfeit of her mother’s boyfriends. It was not something she had any experience in, as her father had been absent for her entire life, the Gray Man had only been around for a few months, and her mother had not dated anyone else in Blue’s memory. Before the events of the last few weeks, 300 Fox Way had been filled to the rafters with Blue’s female relatives. Blue had thought that with the number of aunts and cousins that lived with her, she was used to people. Now, with Artemus hanging around like a man out of time (which, of course, he was), and the Gray Man flirting with her mother in a keen-edged way that Calla would approve of (and she did), 300 Fox Way felt entirely too full, even ignoring Gwenllian. Which was a difficult thing indeed, given that Gwenllian’s commitment to not sleeping continued, which had the effect of keeping everyone _else_ awake as well.

It was worse when it rained. Fall in Henrietta was characterized by clear weeks of cool air and crumbling leaves accented by rain that stuck around for a whole day, like a guest who wasn’t quite sure if he were wanted or not. During clear weeks, Blue was able to escape: to work, to school, to her raven boys and Gansey’s obsessive quest. On the rainy days that she didn’t have school, if Blue wasn’t fast enough to grab one of the few intact umbrellas at the house, she was stuck between choosing to get wet or staying indoors. Even her tree, with its thick branches and dense leaves, was not far enough away to escape the oppressive atmosphere of 300 Fox Way’s newest guests.

Today Blue had chosen to brave the rain and head to the park on the edge of town. It had little to endear itself to people, as it was just a few forlorn trees with autumn-red leaves falling to the ground, and it was out of the way. Blue loved it for those reasons.

Her bike tires skidded on the wet footpath. Normally Blue would ride this part as fast as she could, feet pedaling madly, because there is nothing more dreadful than traveling from one point to another if you’re riding a bike and you have somewhere you wanted to be. Riding took up so much time that Blue couldn’t bear to waste. However, the rain made her usual mad dash from place to place far more dangerous. Blue had a white, shiny scar on her knee from when she had slipped and fallen off her bike when she was twelve, and she was reluctant to add another one.

She dismounted from her bike when she ran out of pavement, wheeling the bike through the park to a tree that still clung to its fall-red leaves. As she walked, she shivered. There was a chill in the air, more than could be accounted for by the rain. It was a coldness that Blue recognized.

“Noah?” she called. “Noah, are you here?”

As she watched, she saw Noah appear. He was standing under a tree at the park, seemingly unaware of the mud puddle spreading under his feet. As Blue wheeled her bike closer, she could see that his Top-Siders were the same as they always were: scuffed and dirty from the forest where he had died. They were unmarked by flecks of mud or water. His hair and clothes were also familiarly rumpled without being spattered with rain. It was on rainy days, when water and mud clung to everything, that Noah looked the most dead. The sky was gray and shadowed, and so was Noah himself.

He smiled at her as she wheeled her bike to a stop and rested it against the tree trunk. The tree was not as good as her tree for shielding her from the rain; the wind shifted as she rested the bike against the tree, sending tiny waterfalls onto her and Noah both. Blue shivered. Noah didn’t.

“You’re late,” Blue said, but she was secretly pleased that he came at all. Noah was hazy on the idea of time, given that he was dead, and so couldn’t be relied on to keep appointments.

Noah patted the limp, wet curls of her hair. “No spikes today.” He sounded disappointed. Blue was disappointed too; she had spent some time crafting her hair into artful disarray before the rain had ruined it.

“Nope,” Blue agreed. “They’re on vacation to sunny beaches.”

“I miss the beach,” Noah said wistfully. “We used to go every summer.”

It was the most talkative Noah had been in a while about his past life. It was difficult for Blue to remember that Noah had had a completely separate life before he became the dead roommate in Monmouth Manufacturing, one where he had been an Aglionby boy with a tricked-out Mustang who smiled crookedly in his license photograph. What little she knew about his life before was piecemeal. Fragments of a person.

Blue wondered, for not the first time, what Noah had planned to do once he graduated from Aglionby. He may not have had a plan; not all Aglionby boys did. It was something they had the luxury of, unlike Blue. She told herself that she wasn’t resentful of that, but it was hard not to be, not when the memory of Mrs Shiftlet saying _now it’s time to make a sensible backup plan_ was still so raw.

“Do you want to go to the beach?” Blue asked. “Gansey would take us if you wanted to go.”

Blue was certain that Gansey would take them all to the beach if they asked him. Gansey’s commitment to his friends was equal to his disregard for fiscal responsibility. If she asked, he would use whatever transportation was most convenient for Noah, regardless of cost, and think nothing of it. It was something that Blue resented, even while knowing that it was because Gansey was thoughtless rather than cruel.

“You could go,” Noah suggested. “You and Gansey.”

Blue wasn’t sure what to make of this suggestion, especially from a boy she had kissed not so long ago. She was inexperienced in these matters — knowing that her kiss could mean someone’s death sentence meant that she practiced a better chaste than sorry policy — but it felt strange to hear easily Noah suggesting it so easily.

“It’s not,” Noah said. “But, like, I’m not alive, and Gansey is, and you don’t really love me like that.”

Blue looked at him, started. She was certain that she had not spoken aloud. Psychic gifts were not a new thing for her, so her surprise was less due to the apparent mind-reading, and more due to Noah demonstrating an ability he hadn’t before. She supposed it made sense that he had some psychic ability; he was living a psychic existence as the echo of a long-dead boy.

“How long have you been able to do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” There was no hint of guile or deception in his shadow-dark eyes.

It must be because they had realigned the ley line, she and Noah and Adam. Since then, Noah had been more substantial, for longer periods of time, though never for as long as he had before Cabeswater had revealed the scene of his death. Sometimes Noah was tangible enough to pass as alive, if the light was poor. Maybe it was a trade: the more normal Noah appeared, the stranger he had to act. It could be a ghostly equivalent exchange.

Noah was staring at her with the hurt, tight expression he wore when someone said he was creepy. Blue realized that whatever he was doing, he was still doing it, and she didn’t think she liked it. Fortunately, she had been recently thinking about how to modify her psychic shield. It was time to try it out.

Blue took a breath. _I am a mirror, I can reach out and touch Noah, and he cannot touch me. I am a mirror, and my thoughts are mine alone._ She visualized fog surrounding her and obscuring her from view, like condensation on glass.

It was an idea she had had after a hot shower. She had stared at the mirror in the bathroom, trying to find the familiar planes of her face in the fogged-up mirror, until Orla banged on the door and told her to move it. The image of her misty, distant reflection had stayed with her ever since. She held it in her mind, and then let out her breath.

“Oh!” Noah exclaimed. “Where did you go?”

Blue squeezed Noah’s wrist, a gentle reminder. His wrist was corpse-cool to touch, a chill that radiated up her hand as Noah took the energy she offered. “I’m right here.”

“Oh, there you are,” Noah breathed in relief. “I couldn’t see you for a moment. Can you go invisible now, like a superhero?”

“Nope,” Blue said. “Still visible.”

She made a mental note to ask Maura about possible uses for mirror magic with respect to ghosts when she got the chance. Gwenllian might know more on the topic, as she shared Blue’s abilities, but Blue wanted an answer she could understand. She would rather not have to sift through the bitter, acidic river of Gwenllian’s bile in the hope of finding some flecks of useful information.

She really should have talked to her mother a long time ago, she suspected. There was an intimate connection between Gansey and Noah, that went beyond their deaths both occurring on the ley line, and she was afraid that she would look back on it later and realize that Maura had had all the answers all along, if only she had asked the right questions.

It would be easier, though, if Noah could be brought to Maura so that she could see him for herself. Blue had no doubts that Maura could see Noah if he was there, and if he chose to make himself visible. It was the ‘choosing to make himself visible’ part that was the true hurdle, Blue suspected.

“Noah,” Blue began carefully, watching Noah to gauge his reaction. “Would you like to meet my mother?”

Noah paled, which for him meant that he became more translucent, the rough bark of the tree behind him lurking in the dark smudge of his face.

“No,” he said fervently. “Nonono.”

“You don’t have to go to my house,” Blue said quickly. “I can bring her to you.”

“You don’t _understand_ ,” Noah said. His voice had the high, sharp note that was the prelude to him panicking. “She won’t mean to, but she’ll use it and there’ll be none for me.”

Blue slid her hand down Noah’s wrist to his increasingly insubstantial hand and held it. It was a breath of cold air from a freezer, as intangible as air. “Noah,” she said firmly. “You can use me.”

“Really?” Noah sounded wary. He was still more of a suggestion of a boy than someone who could be mistaken as alive, and Blue knew that he was prone to vanishing if pressed. “After last time?”

“You’ll do better,” Blue said.

“I’ll try,” Noah said dubiously. He looked down at their linked hands. “Right now?”

“You will,” Blue said, “but we can’t do it right away.” Blue wished they could, though; Noah was prone to worrying himself into a state from which it would be nearly impossible to calm him down again. Just as he was doing right now. But she had left 300 Fox Way in the rain because of how chaotic everything was there, and she was reluctant to bring Noah into that environment, or try to bring her mother out while things were so unsettled. “She’s still sorting out her love life.”

“Maybe she needs a day planner,” Noah said.

Blue suspected that Noah hadn’t intended it to be funny, but she giggled at it anyway. “She didn’t date for years, and now she has two boyfriends?” She shook her head. “Though I can’t talk about things getting out of hand. Why is love so _complicated_?”

“I don’t know.” It was a whisper that she just barely heard. “I never got the chance to find that out.”

Then he was gone, the physical echo of cool fingers against her wrist the only sign that he had ever been there.

“Oh, Noah.” Blue sighed. There wasn’t really much else to be said. She’d arranged with Noah to see him to clear her head, and had reminded Noah of what he had lost. She really needed to talk to Maura about him, and soon. Whenever he was in these moods he seemed to be increasingly less of a person, as if what made him Noah was being worn away, leaving only shallow depressions behind. It was frightening to watch, not the least because Blue had no idea how to stop it, or if she should. What if Noah was meant to disappear, move on to wherever it was that people went after they died?

What if Maura told her that she should force him to move on, that it was for his own good?

Blue didn’t think she could do that. Maybe before, when she just thought of Noah as an Aglionby boy and therefore not safe to recognize as being something other than an annoyance in her life. Maybe before, when she didn’t know the crooked line of his nose, the way his voice shifted off-key as he sung that awful murder squash song, when she didn’t know that his death held Gansey’s life. When she didn’t know him, and therefore didn’t love him in the way that she loved family: open-eyed and aware of his flaws and loving him for them.

She would talk to Maura about ghosts and mirror magic. She would talk to Gansey about what their favor would be, if it was what he thought it would be, and how to frame it so that both he and Noah would live. She had time, though; it was still warm enough for Gansey to not need the sweater she’d seen him wearing on St. Mark’s Eve, the rain days still devoid of the icy wind that would necessitate more protection than just an umbrella.

She would talk to them when she had a plan to solve the Gordian knot of Gansey and Noah, and she had time for that, and for negotiating the unexpected guests in her home. After all, until that was sorted out, Maura would really not be much use to anyone.

“Ugh,” she said with feeling. “Why is love so _complicated_?”

She kicked the tree. It didn’t hold any answers for her, and Blue felt guilty shortly afterward for kicking an inanimate object that had done nothing to deserve her violence. “Sorry, tree,” she said. “It’s been that kind of day. Week. _Life_.”

Things had been simpler before she allowed herself to love. Things had been simpler when Maura’s loves remained lost. Once, Blue had thought her family’s love was all she would have. Now, both Sargent women were beleaguered with the complications of love, and it was incredibly frustrating. She suspected that no solution would be forthcoming. Even if Glendower was found, and with him Gansey’s dreams, it still wouldn’t answer Blue’s questions. After all, Glendower had buried his daughter alive. Blue doubted he was particularly skilled in navigating complex relationships.

Discomfited, Blue rode home, unmindful of the rain. She had more important things to think about than how her tires slipped in puddles.

How does a mirror save a ghost? She suspected that she would have to find out.

* * *

 

Blue skidded on the turn into 300 Fox Way, righting herself with an almost herculean effort, and walked her bike into the shed. She then raced to the front door where she stood, dripping, on the doorstep as she searched for her keys. When she found them she fumbled them in her chilled, clumsy fingers, almost dropping them. Noah was more solicitous now about how much he took, but she still felt the effects.

She sighed as she closed the door behind her.

“Shoes off!” Maura called from the living room.

“I just got in!” Blue complained, scraping her shoes off with the heels of her feet. “Give me a minute!”

On socked feet, Blue walked through to the living room, where Maura was seated at the sofa, studying pensively the array of cards in front of her. Blue recognized the cards, but not the meaning. It didn’t look like a client’s spread.

Maura looked up at Blue’s entrance and her eyes widened fractionally. Blue wondered what it was that she saw. For an ordinary person, Blue would have thought it might be the expression on her face. But considering it was Maura, it could be literally anything, even Blue’s aura.

“What’s wrong?” Blue asked warily. She teased at one of the fraying ends of her knitted gloves, before putting her hands deliberately by her sides.

“I don’t know,” Maura said. She sounded troubled; a frown knitted her brows together. She drew her tarot cards into a pile in front of her. “Pick a card,” she suggested.

This was a tradition that was comforting in its familiarity. For as long as Blue could remember, she had drawn a card from Maura’s deck and been told what it meant. She doubted that today she would draw her card, the Page of Cups. Today wasn’t a problem with the amount of potential that she had.

Blue ran her hand over the deck, eyes closed. Not being magical like the rest of her family meant that closing her eyes didn’t achieve much, but she thought she felt a tug from one card regardless. She pulled it out between two fingers, flipped it over, and opened her eyes.

It was the Hanged Man, reversed. It wasn’t a card that Blue drew very often; Blue was not a person wracked by indecision. She was not afraid of change, or at least not usually.

Maura’s frown did not ease, but it did not deepen either. “This isn’t you,” Maura said, her finger tapping the top of the card.

“No,” Blue said heavily. Confirmation that the card wasn’t about her did not ease the knot of anxiety in her chest. Maura’s words just made the weight of that knot heavier. “It’s Noah.” When she saw Maura’s blank look, Blue added, “The one that keeps dying in our yard.”

“Oh,” Maura said. “Him. I wondered when you would ask about him. I remember the news when he disappeared. You wouldn’t, as you were very young. But I remember hearing him, sometimes, on the corpse road, and wondering where he was.”

She meant of course, Noah’s bones. Blue felt a twinge of guilt about how they had dug up Noah’s remains after his funeral and reburied him along the ley line. Perhaps that desecration was why he was eroding now. Maybe they should have left his bones in his family’s plot.

“He’s fading,” Blue said. “He’s fading and it’s _terrible_. I’m worried that he’ll be worn away and all that’ll be left is how angry he was about being murdered. And he _doesn’t_ want to move on to wherever ghosts go, I asked him. I can’t even really get him to come and see you, because he’s that afraid. He’s going to disappear and I don’t know what to _do_.”

Blue swallowed hard. She sounded more than upset. She sounded almost hysterical, and that was not who Blue was. She was sensible and practical and goal-focused. She did not babble. So she closed her mouth and swallowed again, trying to remove the thick obstruction that had had apparently taken up residence in her throat.

“What should I do?” she said finally, hopelessly. “I don’t want him to disappear. It hurts.”

She tried to brace herself against the possibility — the likelihood— that her mother might remind her that she had been warned about getting involved with Gansey, and by extension his friends. If anyone had the right to tell her ‘I told you so’, it was Maura.

Instead, Maura folded her into a hug.

“Ah, Blue,” Maura said, and her sympathy was far worse than scorn because of how unconditional it was. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Blue said into Maura’s shoulder. The comforting scent of her mother’s perfume and skin reminded Blue of when she was a child, and the worst thing she had to deal with was when one of the other children pushed her down and caused her to skin her knee. “It’s not _fair_.”

“No,” Maura agreed. “It’s not fair.” She patted Blue’s wet hair. “You were always my sensible girl, and that just means that love hurts you harder when it hits.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Blue protested, and was horrified to realize that the reason why her breath came in jerky sobs was because she was crying. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying: Noah hadn’t disappeared yet. Perhaps it was for herself: she had thought that it would be easier to lose Noah because he was already dead, and that had not proven true at all. She had already lost Persephone. She didn’t think she could bear losing Noah too.

They stood there, entangled, Blue sobbing into her mother’s shoulder, Maura patting Blue’s back and making nonsense soothing noises.

“Love doesn’t make sense,” Maura said when Blue’s sobs settled into the occasional hiccup. “But it’s how I got you.”

Blue snorted through the last of her tears. “That is so clichéd,” she said, but smiled as she said it. She broke away from the hug and scrubbed at her face with her hand to clear off the tears and mucus.

“You’ll always have us,” Maura said. “No matter what. Even after you wipe your nose with the back of your hand.”

“Yeah,” Blue said. She felt almost overcome with love, the knowledge that the world may be a terrible place but she would always have a safe space with her mother if she needed one. “I know.”

“And I’ll see what I can find about ghosts,” Maura continued. “Even if it’s not helpful right now, it might be eventually. You do seem to run into trouble.”

“Yeah, I know,” Blue said. “Gansey seems determined to chase down every bit of trouble in Henrietta.”

“And Blue? Be careful,” her mother said. “It’s very difficult to see what happens next for you.”

“I’ll be careful,” Blue promised. “I’m sensible, aren’t I?”

“Sometimes I worry about that,” Maura said. She shuffled the tarot cards and placed them back into their silk bag. “You did go out into the rain without an umbrella.”

“Blame Orla,” Blue said. “She took the last one.”

Blue felt much better even after crying, which didn’t always happen. Ordinarily she found the process tiresome and embarrassing. However, looking at her mother with her tear-stained shirt, seeing her love and concern, made things feel a little better. A little less hopeless. She might not have all the answers just yet, but with the psychics of 300 Fox Way behind her, Blue thought she was on her way to getting them.

* * *

 

The meeting between Maura and Noah took place in the churchyard, which was intentional, and at twilight, which was not. Blue had meant for the meeting to take place after school, and quietly resented that the meeting between psychic and echo was more clichéd than it had to be.

She blamed Noah for the delay: when she had presented the idea to him in the mundane corridors of her school, he had disappeared. Anyone who thought a ghost hunt was a thing to look forward to had clearly never had to look for a scared, perpetually teenaged ghost in a near-empty school. Eventually she had sat in her seat in her homeroom, and waited for the chill in the air that signified Noah’s reappearance. He always returned to her. When she had asked about it, he had said in a peculiarly offended way that it was unfair of her to say that.

How it was unfair, Blue still didn’t know. She’d never gotten a straight answer out of Noah. Not even now, with his hand clamped around hers like a frigid vise, as he stared at her mother in dread. Not while he stared at her and looked more like a terrified specter than a boy.

“Hello,” Maura said gently. She seemed to belong here in the courtyard at this time of night, despite her sensibility and groundedness. Maybe it was the way that she blended into the shadows, despite her sensible sweater and jeans. It was probably because she was looking at Noah directly, despite how eerie he was right now. “I hear you’ve been a good friend to Blue.”

It wasn’t quite how Blue had said it, but she’d let it pass. She could feel Noah’s shivers through her hand.

“Did she say that?” His voice was hollow, a suggestion of sound rather than words itself. A soft breeze could drown out his words. He sounded so terribly sick and frightened, and it must have taken all of his courage to not run away and leave Blue and her mother alone. Blue let him leech more power from her, causing her toes to cramp and curl up. “I don’t think that’s right. I just don’t want to disappear.”

“Neither do I,” Maura said.

“Why?” His head was cocked like a bird, and his voice was thin. “Isn’t that what psychics do? Send ghosts on?”

“If they want to,” Maura said. “But given how much time you spend in our yard, you’re practically one of the family.”

“She doesn’t mean that,” Blue said frantically, shaking her head. She had forgotten to tell Maura that Noah never remembered the re-enactments of his death, and she didn’t think mentioning it would help get Noah onside.

“Now, Blue,” Maura said. Her expression was neutral, but the slight angle of her head meant that she was about to tease Blue and that Blue was not going to enjoy it. “Is that any way to talk to your brother?”

Of all the things Blue expected Maura to say, that was definitely not one of them. “What? What are you talking about?”

Noah laughed. It wasn’t much. At first, Blue thought she had imagined it. Then she turned and saw his smile, and the knot in her chest eased. She hadn’t expected it to go this way, but it seemed that Maura had a better read of the situation than Blue had thought. Or at least, Maura had a better read on Noah than Blue had anticipated.

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” he said shyly. “Am I an older or younger brother?”

“Neither,” Blue said firmly. She regretted it when Noah’s expression changed from tentative amusement to hurt. She’d forgotten that Noah had had two sisters. Or, she supposed, he still did. It was hard to remember that he had had a life before Monmouth and Gansey’s quest.

“We’ll decide that later,” Maura said. “You said what you don’t want. What do you want?”

Noah looked puzzled, and more than a little wary. He said nothing for a minute, sucking on his bottom lip. Then he said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever knew.”

And he never had the opportunity to find out, Blue realized. Her earlier miserable fury about how unfair it was that Aglionby boys were given success now felt like ash. It was unfair that she could dream impossibly big and be stymied by financial restrictions. It was also unfair that Noah had died before he had the chance to dream at all. Both were equally unfair.

 _I am a mirror, and my thoughts are my own,_ she reminded herself.It was a good thing that Blue had been practicing her mirror misting technique. She didn’t want Noah to respond to those thoughts.

“You’re only seventeen,” Maura said. “You don’t have to know just yet.”

“I think wanting is for the living,” Noah said mournfully. “I don’t really remember how to do it.”

“That’s not true,” Blue interjected. “You want heaps of things. You want to go to that gelato place. You want to sing that awful song with Ronan. You want to be included in whatever goes on in Monmouth — and don’t say it, my mother doesn’t need to know.”

As she spoke, Blue thought that she was talking around what Noah really wanted, rather than saying it directly. All of these wants were little things, normal things, things that she took for granted. Things that Blue would do any day and think nothing of it. They were all things that involved other people seeing you, interacting with you, and knowing you were there. Then she understood what Noah truly wanted. She wondered how it was that she hadn’t realized it already.

“What you want is for people to remember you exist.”

Noah took in a breath. “Yes.” His voice was small. “Yes, that’s what I want.”

“That,” Maura said, “we can do.”

By the way that Maura’s hands were held not quite by her sides, the fond half smile and the angle of her head, Blue knew that she wanted to hug Noah.

“Go on,” Blue suggested. Noah stared in bewilderment and that broke Blue’s heart. How had she not understood how touch-starved he must be? Blue pushed him forward. He was tangible enough to be pushed, though without the weight and heft that a flesh and blood body would have, and his hand slipped through hers as he stumbled towards Maura. He fell onto her, and into her embrace. He looked like he had finally come home, the prodigal son returned to find that his room was just as he had left it.

It was a moment that raised more questions than answered them. Blue had known that Gansey’s quest for Glendower had been started by Whelk and Noah’s quest several years earlier. Was Gansey really the only one to think of asking the psychics at 300 Fox Way for guidance? Whelk wouldn’t have thought to ask, Blue thought, but would that smiling boy in the driver’s license have gone to see her family? Would her mother have told her if he had given how badly everything had gone for Noah afterward?

Blue decided it didn’t really matter. She couldn’t ask, and it was a knowledge that wouldn’t help her. If there was a history, it was best left unexplored, given that the only consequences seemed to be that Noah now looked at her mother, rather than anywhere else, and no longer was tensed to flee. She stepped forward and hugged them both. Maura was warm and familiar, and Noah was cool and familiar, and in a way they were both _home_ to her. Home, and family, and while she might not think of Noah as a brother, he could easily be one of the relatives in 300 Fox Way. The house was big enough to hold one lost, sad, ghostly boy.

And maybe Maura’s lovers weren’t such an intrusion after all. 300 Fox Way was big enough to fold two men into it, especially given that Maura had been more herself since their arrival. Blue didn’t like the change, but perhaps that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about her after all, and when it mattered, Maura was still there.

Maybe it wasn’t just Noah who feared change.

It was a painful realization. But one that Blue thought was right.

They walked down to the car; Blue holding the hands of Noah and Maura, two parts of her family. Things might change. Things probably would change. A year ago she wouldn’t have imagined holding hands with a ghost and her mother on the corpse road. In a year’s time, where would she be? Maybe, if she couldn’t leave Henrietta for college, it wouldn’t be that bad. Community college might not be that bad. She had family here. That was worth a lot.


End file.
